Obama’s Health Care Plan Online Now
by Rebecca Schoenkopf
After all the kvetching and crying and sobbing and screaming -- and that was just from me -- Obama's got a health care plan on the table, and it doesn't suck!
Even more surprising? Sen. Dianne Feinstein added something to it that's actually valuable. In the wake of Wellpoint's attempted 39 percent rate hike for individual plan buyers in California, DiFi has proposed a Health Insurance Rate Authority to k-o any further ridiculousnesses.
There's no public option in it -- because all compromises must be from the liberals, and not the other way around -- but the general tenor of it is light years beyond what we've got now. The excise tax on high-value benefits, i.e. the good kind of health insurance negotiated by unions, will be scaled back and replaced with a tax on singles earning over $200,000 a year and couples earning over $250,000.
I like!
This weekend, Dana Milbank wrote in the Washington Post that the only thing stopping Obama from becoming Jimmy Carter was the wise counsel of Rahm Emanuel. Emanuel, Milbank said, had argued against a big healthcare plan and maintained the president should push for smaller, more popular nuggets the GOP would have voted for. Emanuel, Milbank said, understood Congress!
Because if there's anything the GOP wants, it's for the president to pass something popular on their watch. And if there's anything that's gone smoothly this year, it's the way the administration has handled Congress.
Rahm Emanuel is a dick.
Yes, Obama has a plan now. And thank God; this leaving it up to Congress business -- LIKE RAHM WANTED -- did not go well.
I'm heartened -- verily, heartened! -- to see Obama's gone full bore again. Americans still enjoy listening to the president. From the beginning, this mess could have been avoided if Obama had bully pulpited the issue, explaining that no, there were no death panels, and no, grandma wouldn't be eating catfood to pay for some welfare mama's shiatsu massage.
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